By arthur Weinreb
Monday, November 27, 2006
The National Post reported that in a copy of a policy paper that the newspaper had received, Tom axworthy made the shocking admission that Liberalism often doesn't work. axworthy, who teaches policy studies at Queen's University and was a principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau is in charge of the party's "renewal” strategy. He wrote, "Liberalism's dirty secret is that government doesn't seem to work much of the time”. axworthy proffered such things as the gun registry, the immigrant processing backlog and the quality of drinking water on Native reserves as examples of failed government policies.
It's not clear that "much of the time” is meant to cover the last 40 years, but it easily could. What was surprising about what Tom axworthy wrote was not the truth of his statement but the fact that a prominent member of the Liberal Party of Canada actually came out and said it. It has to rank as one of the most honest statements to come out of the party since Confederation.
The man in charge of renewal is certainly not suggesting that liberalism be abolished or that the party cave in and merge with Scary Steve and his lot. What axworthy wants is renewal to try and narrow the gap between what the party "promises” and what it "delivers”.
Many Canadians have known what axworthy is essentially saying; that liberalism simply doesn't work. Promises are the highlight of the Liberal/liberal philosophy; the delivery is merely secondary, desired but not essential. Policies aren't developed to help Canadians as much as they are to make Liberals feel good about themselves and they feel good when they come up with a promise that gives them a warm, fuzzy feeling. We saw a classic example of this type of liberalism when Bill Clinton was questioned by Fox News' Chris Wallace about his inability to capture Osama bin Laden when he had the chance. "I tried, I tried”; that's all that seemed to be important to Clinton. The fact that he tried was more important than how many americans and others happened to die on September 11, 2001.
Liberals take the view that people are utterly incapable of taking care of themselves because they are either too dumb or because of such factors as race or ethnicity they are reduced to mere helpless victims of a cruel and uncaring George W. Bush-led world. Liberalism has absolutely nothing to do with actually implementing policies as long the Liberals who dream them up can feel better about themselves.
Let's take the gun registry, one of the areas that Tom axworthy has identified and not being delivered. There is no rational reason why billions of dollars should be spent to force sportsmen and farmers to register their long guns. If pressed for a concrete reason to justify the expenditure those on the left will inevitably resort to the "if it only saves one life” argument. Of course government and society is never about just saving one life; if it was we would impose the death penalty for impaired driving. Liberals would feel good about themselves if they eventually banned all guns and the registration system is a good first step. Meanwhile, crimes using unregistered guns are proliferating in major cities while the Liberals/liberals just sigh and then blame the americans.
The state of drinking water on aboriginal reserves is another good example. The Liberals feel their best when they throw a lot of money (other people's money, of course) at First Nations peoples. Throwing money at the problems of aboriginals allow Liberals/liberals to show how much they care about the poor hapless Indians. It's the promise that counts. The fact that no matter how much money is spent results in some reserves having bad drinking water is not worth thinking about. Instead of saying, "I tried, I tried” they say, "we spent, we spent”. It's all about them.
and the Liberals get good mileage out of their promises. National daycare has been a major Liberal promise since Jean Chrtien first came to power in 1993. Yet if the Liberals return to power and actually implement the program under Ken Dryden or some other nanny-in-chief, it will turn out much like the gun registry.
No matter how noble Tom axworthy's pronouncements are, nothing will change. Liberals will always be Liberals.
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